


First Aid

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4036150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: "She wishes he'd stayed with the car. She wishes she hadn't listened when he insisted it was stupid for her to drop him at the loft first, then double back to the precinct. She wishes he would stop hovering."</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Aid

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: One-shot insert for "Home is Where the Heart Stops" (1 x 07)

 

 

She wishes he'd stayed with the car. She wishes she hadn't listened when he insisted it was stupid for her to drop him at the loft first, then double back to the precinct. She wishes he would stop _hovering_.

She's exhausted and uncomfortable in the make-shift combination of fancy foundation garments and the thankfully-clean-enough street clothes she had in her locker. Her feet are killing her after hours in those stupid strappy sandals, and she just wants to get in and get out. Drop him off and make this gesture to Joanne Delgado before she loses her nerve. She just wants to be done with this night and this case, and he's _hovering_.

He's not even peppering her with questions or comments or anything at all. He's quiet for once, but always just _there._ Right at her elbow with the garment bag he insisted on carrying, and he's the _loudest_ person she's ever met, even when he's being quiet. Because he might be wordless, but he's never, ever _silent._ Never _still._ His mouth opens and closes and his one hand keeps coming up, then falling away, like he's making up his mind to something. It's like a fly in her ear.

She finally snaps in the parking garage. They're ten feet from the car. She's twelve minutes, tops, from freedom, and she should just let it go. Ignore him and be _done_ with this, but she just _snaps._ She whirls on one heel to face him.

_What,_ Castle?

That's what she means to say. It's what she's pretty sure she's in the process of saying when suddenly he has her by the wrist.

"Enough, Beckett." He turns her back around, weirdly gentle, even though he's kind of kicking at her feet as he marches her toward the car. "You're limping. Let me look." He drapes the garment bag across the roof of her Crown vic, half covering the passenger side window.

He's startled _her_ into silence with it. This sudden, quiet, commanding tone, but his hands fall to her hips. He's lifting her on to the hood. He's _trying,_ and she finds her tongue again.

"I am _not_ limping." She bats his hands away.

He blinks and takes a half step back, as if he's shocked himself as much as her with this, but the retreat is a thing of a moment. He lifts one foot swiftly, patent leather rapidly approaching her own battered brown, as if he's going to stomp her toe. She shuffles back, yelping as the move makes her socks chafe in exactly the wrong way.

"Are too." He holds out one hand, palm up. A half-way gesture that she ignores. He sighs and lifts his eyebrows. "You're limping and trying not to, and it's _sad,_ Beckett. Plus, you're messing with my _extensive_ notes on the kinesics of Nikki Heat."

"Kinesics?" She sees his mouth open and cuts him off. "I _know_ what kinesics means, Castle."

"Then I'm sure you appreciate how crucial my appreciation for the way you move is to the development of the new character that burns within me." He sees she's not buying the angle and drops it abruptly. "Beckett. It hurts. Just let me take a look."

And then she's up on the hood. Unassisted, but still. It's less a decision on her part than him taking advantage of the fact that she's . . . flummoxed by this. By this mixture of stubbornness and concern. By the sight of him suddenly crouching before her in a tuxedo that's already got dirt ground into the shoulders from wrestling with Karl Nadir. By how gentle and efficient his hands are as they slide off her boots and set them aside.

There's a sound as he peels her sock down, holding the fabric as wide away from her skin as he can. A hiss from her or him or both of them.

"Ouch. Sorry." His thumb coasts below the prominence of her ankle. An apology that has her not quite successfully suppressing a shiver. He's intent, or pretending to be. He doesn't seem to notice. "Stuck. Blister must have burst."

"Is this . . ." She's blushing furiously. It's too much. It's _gross_ and _weird_ and just _too much._ "Is this some kind of fetish?" She blurts it, too loud, and blushes all the harder.

"Not in general." He pauses in his careful sweep of the skin he's bared and flashes a grin up at her that says far too much about how he _might_ feel in particular, but he's back to work in an instant. "For me, anyway. Not that I'm dismissing the erotic potential of feet."

"Erotic potential."

She makes a face as she peers down, trying to keep an eye on things before they get any weirder. He's fishing something out of the inside pocket of his jacket. She sees a flash of silver and hears a metallic _snick,_ but she can't see a thing between his bent head and the breadth of his shoulders.

"For _Cenerentola_ . . ." He trails off, distracted. She hears something tear. He looks up as he tugs on her big toe, an incredibly strange counterpoint to . . . everything. "Alcohol. This is gonna sting, but you've got sock fuzz all stuck in there . . ."

She nods. He nods back. The grim exchange reminds her of glass raining down on their heads behind Diana Edwards' kitchen island. She almost laughs, but that's over soon enough.

" _Cenerentola?_ " She says it between her teeth. It stings like a _bitch,_ but his fingers are there the next second with something smooth and cool. "The opera?"

His head pops up at that. He grins at her the way he does more and more lately. Like he's going for smoldering, but it comes out ridiculously pleased and more than a little goofy.

"Rossini . . . " He shrugs, correcting himself as he goes back to work. "Jacopo Ferretti, actually—the librettist—had to replace Cinderella's glass slipper with bracelets. A woman's bare foot was too scandalous for the Italian stage. Of course the French thought the Italians were prudes . . ."

_"Castle!"_ She kicks out as he touches an ice cold pad to someplace high on the top of her foot that used to have skin.

He catches her ankle, deftly leaning aside just in time to avoid the ball of her foot. "Sorry. You're not as easily distracted as my usual patient. I should've warned you."

"You'd better mean your kid, Castle." Her spine goes soft again as he soothes the burning spot with a liberal slather of something.

"I mean my kid."

He squeezes the back of her calf gently. Her breath comes on a sharp inhale and she wonders all over again if he's really so caught up that he doesn't notice the chill chasing over her skin, or if he's sparing her for once. She feels him waiting for her to meet his eyes, and she can't decide. She can't decide at all.

"One more," he says softly. "And then you can pick your band-aids."

"Pick?" It's just a little loud that time. Not a hiss or something that draws blood from the corner of her lip.

"Pick," he says absently as he leans in close to be sure he's gotten everything. "I have Batman and Spider-Man for DC–Marvel balance. Wonder Woman, of course. And Power Puff Girls because I want to see how long Alexis will go before she's 'too old' for them."

He dots the last spot with whatever's all over his fingers and stands, wiping them clean on the last of the alcohol swabs. He crumples garbage in one fist and twirls something under her nose with the fingers of the other hand. He gives an expert flick of his thumb and the thing in his hand opens on a spine like a slim silver book.

"Is that . . .?" She snatches it from him. She snaps it closed and holds it up to the light. "Is this a _cigarette_ case?"

"Cigarillo." He tries to take it back, but she's holding it high and fumbling it behind her back. "Beckett, come on. Your feet are freezing."

They are, she realizes. She blinks at the ugly white light reflecting off the case. At him with his clean cuffs and dirty shoulders. Dirty knees now, too, and that sets her blushing all over again. She hides. She tries to hide.

"A cigarillo case?" She holds it high once more and arches an eyebrow. Trying too hard to turn this oddly intimate moment back to something more familiar. "You carry a _cigarillo_ case as a first-aid kit."

"Smoking is gross." He plucks the case from her fingers. He busies himself, buffing the smudges from the gleaming surface with his shirtfront."The accoutrements of smoking? Unfortunately very cool."

He shrugs. The tips of his ears are burning red. He's flipping the case in his palm and not meeting her eyes. She feels terrible all of a sudden. Just _terrible._ She wants to apologize, but the moment—this whole long, stretch of moments—is already so awkward that she can't think how. She reaches out and taps the case with her fingernail.

"Batman," she says. She points to the top of her left foot, the biggest, angriest spot.

He's surprised enough that his hands finally still. His head snaps up and there's that grin again. Except it does smolder this time. More than just a little, though his eyes crinkle up, too, with how hard he's smiling. How pleased he is.

"Excellent choice." He stoops again and smooths the black strip in place. He nods to the other foot and the spot on her instep. "Sticking with the theme?"

She shakes her head. Thinks about it and decides _what the hell._ "Power Puff Girl." He arches and eyebrow and reaches for pink. She hauls her knee up, jerking her foot away, and gesturing with one toe to the green underneath it. " _Buttercup_."

"Obviously." He struggles a little with that one. The angle is awkward and her toes curl tight when his fingers brush the bottom of her foot. "Ticklish?" He looks up, directly into her hard stare. " _Not_ ticklish," he mutters, crumpling the wrappers and pocketing them.

" _Definitely_ not ticklish." She swipes at him with her foot. "So that better not show up in Nikki Heat's kinesics."

"Understood." He knocks at the underside of her toe with his knuckles. "Last one. Choose wisely. Bad-ass Amazonian princess or schlubby Native New Yorker."

"Wonder Woman . . ." It's halfway out, because that's what was on the tip of her tongue, but she hesitates. She hates him for putting it like that, though she couldn't say why. He has her completely turned around. "I hate you."

It slips out. A strange, flirtatious grumble and she really _does_ hate him now. She _hates_ him enough that she almost jumps down from the hood and on to the filthy garage floor.

He anticipates her, though. He lays a hand over her knee and stays her, defusing the moment with a nod, exaggerated in its seriousness. "It's the alcohol. So _burn-y_. Alexis always hates me afterward, too." He sees the blush on her cheeks, or maybe he doesn't. Either way, he lets his eyes skitter away and bends low, peering around the far edge of her foot. "Ooops. Missed a spot."

His hands are busy again. He smooths something along the outside of her heel, even though there's nothing there, then circles back to the angry, glistening spot on her toe. He wraps a tiny version of Wonder Woman around that and nudges at her calves until she's holding her feet straight out. "Guess you get to collect the whole set."

He steps back, standing at his full height to admire his handiwork for a second. He reaches past her for the shoes and socks resting further down the hood.

"I can do it!"

She reaches out. Their hands collide and she tugs his away. He shows his palms. She feels bad again. Repeats herself more softly, because she doesn't know what else to say. He nods, accepting it for the apology it's meant to be. She hopes so, any way.

He turns and gathers up the garment bag. She slides on socks and shoes, waiting every minute for the agony, but there's nothing.

"Lidocaine," he says, reading her like always. He's holding the driver's side door for her and she's halfway behind the wheel even though she doesn't remember deciding to let him. "In the goopy stuff. Triple antibiotic and topical anesthetic."

It's the last thing either of them says for a while. For the whole of the drive to the loft. She pulls to the curb and he looks up like he's been lost in thought and can't believe they're there already. He turns to her. He opens his mouth, and there's nothing. It surprises him, too, and the air is thick and awkward again.

She opens her own mouth. _Thanks._ That's what she means to say. It's not what comes out at all.

"You're strange." That's what comes out, and she's _tired_ of her own tongue betraying her. She's tired of it, but there it is. One more time and apparently in for the long haul. "You're like . . . millionaire playboy writer with your fairy godmother routine. With your tux and your cigarillo case . . ."

"The white whale." He cuts in cooly with a flick of his eyebrows at her.

It's an over-the-top gesture she'd have welcomed five minutes ago, but it bothers her now. She scowls at him and he looks away. Out the window and he may be mouthing a _sorry_ of his own.

"But you're not." She turns in her seat toward him. "You're this . . . smart . . ." — she gives him a sharp look, but it's lost. He's still staring at the sidewalk — " _Dorky_. . . " — that turns his head, and she's wickedly satisfied. Her tongue has another twist left in it, though — "Really _sweet_ guy with freaking Wonder Woman band-aids . . . " She's done, finally. Almost. "You're strange."

He's quiet. Deeply interested in whatever's out the passenger-side window all over again. She's just wondering how bad it would hurt to kick herself and why the hell she can't just say _thank you_ like a normal person. Because the whole thing _is_ sweet, even if it's more than a little weird. She's about to say it, knowing it'll come out miserable. She's just about to when he turns suddenly.

"I'm not strange." He unbuckles his seatbelt and his tone gives absolutely nothing away. She can't tell if he's mad or hurt or amused or what. He reaches out, lightning fast, and suddenly he has her fingers. Suddenly he has the back of her hand to his lips. "I'm a direct-from-factory rogue."

He hesitates. Smiles a little for the first time, and it's all a different kind of heat. Warmth, really, and a question for her maybe. _Maybe,_ but he's pushing the door open and dropping her fingers. He's leaning back in and more than a little of him seems to think that's a really bad idea.

"Don't you forget it, Detective," he says and then he's gone.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Just an odd one-shot that popped into my head. Thanks for reading.


End file.
